Wired burns virtual currency to troll bitcoiners
Wired got sent a bitcoin miner from Butterfly Labs and they put it through it’s paces. Wired then decided to setup the most boring “Let’s Play” and start livestreaming the thing just hashing away, a mind numbing endless stream of random numbers on a screen.
Since Wired is a journalistic entity and it would probably be very unethical to profit off the mining of a free review unit sent by a company, Wired decided to destroy the keys to the wallet file used to store the bitcoins.
But in the end, the answer was obvious. The world
May 11, 2013 @ 8:04 pm
What soup kitchen takes bitcoins? o_O
What would a homeless person do with a slip of paper with a key on it? God bitcoiners are stupid. Instead of bitching about wired throwing away incorporeal data that is only usable on a third-rate dating site and an illegal narcotic exchange, maybe use all that REAL money you are throwing away in power consumption and give THAT to charity. Y’know, since charities actually USE real money.
December 22, 2013 @ 11:25 am
Define “real money” please…
May 14, 2013 @ 8:22 pm
As if these assholes donate to charity
June 24, 2013 @ 8:46 am
Ok , so what ? They have money to waste. That’s good for them ! Maybe a little pretentious to brag about it and show off that way but good for them. Now there’s one thing i don’t get when they say “bitcoin is really is nothing more than an abstraction” ? what do they mean by abstraction ? I don’t understand that word. English not being my main language could be the reason but to me aren’t numbers an abstraction too ? are mathematics an abstraction ? My euros must also be an abstraction as well (since most of them are in my bank..the mere fact saying that “ihave money in my bank” isn’t it an abstraction too ? where is that money exactly ? ) what about art ? paintings , music, movies, novels…abstractions too ?
August 2, 2013 @ 1:15 am
Abstraction means that bitcoins are literally nothing more than a few numbers. It’s not a currency. It’s a non-existent commodity.
August 2, 2013 @ 6:28 am
What about music ? Have you ever paid for some mp3 you like ? at least i am sure you’ve downloaded some. But aren’t they are just some numbers? I could even abstract more and say say they are just some variation of an electric current. What about movie ? what about books or even ebooks! are they just letters ? And then there is “software” I happened to pay more than 500$ for some..But what are they ? numbers too i guess.
What i have in my bank is basically a number. If you’re are good at “manipulating numbers” and “electric current” (aka hacking) you could probably change that number..
In our world saying something is just a few number is irrelevant. All our industry and our economy rely on abstractions like “numbers”
December 22, 2013 @ 11:24 am
Most dollars are nothing more than numbers on a computer, and most ciculating dollars are nothing more than a piece of paper with numbers on it, do you classify that as a currency? Really?
August 2, 2013 @ 10:24 pm
I dont think it would have been a bad idea to donate the bitcoins to charity, but even if this had entered the journalists head. you have two choices:
1) document the retarded process of trying to convert the imaginary money to USD, because these bitcoins would probably be technically the property of wired magazine, and will be handling actual USD once through whatever process to convert them to USD, will need to lodge this through the finance department/managers/legal and what charity do you pick etc.
2)Delete the key – no paperwork required, coins destroyed, story over.
I know which one I’d rather pick.
December 22, 2013 @ 11:19 am
There is no retarded process, you sell the bitcoins, people buy them and give you dallars, you give the dollars to charity, end of story. (better yet would be finding a charity that accepts them, I don’t know of any as of now but I haven’t bothered researching)
December 26, 2014 @ 4:33 pm
No charity is dumb enough to accept bitcoins.